The dimming of RW Auriga. Is dust accretion preceding an outburst?

Abstract

RW Aur A has experienced various dimming events in the last years, decreasing its brightness by $\sim 2\text{mag}$ for periods of months to years. Multiple observations indicate that a high concentration of dust grains, from the protoplanetary disk's inner regions, is blocking the starlight during these events. We propose a new mechanism that can send large amounts of dust close to the star on short timescales, through the reactivation of a dead zone in the protoplanetary disk. Using numerical simulations we model the accretion of gas and dust, along with the growth and fragmentation of particles in this scenario. We find that after the reactivation of the dead zone, the accumulated dust is rapidly accreted towards the star in around 15 years, at rates of ${\dot{M}}_{\text{d}}=6\times 10^{-6}{\text{M}}_{\odot }/\text{yr}$ and reaching dust-to-gas ratios of $\epsilon \approx 5$, preceding an increase in the gas accretion by a few years. This sudden rise of dust accretion can provide the material required for the dimmings, although the question of how to put the dust into the line of sight remains open to speculation.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Dust growth and evolution in protoplanetary disks
• Large gaps and high accretion rates in photoevaporative transition disks with a dead zone
• Gas accretion damped by dust back-reaction at the snow line
• Exploring the dimming event of RW Aur A through multi-epoch VLT/X-Shooter spectroscopy
• Dust entrainment in photoevaporative winds: Densities and imaging
• RW Aur B: a modest UX Ori type companion of the famous primary
• RW Aur A : SpeX Spectral Evidence for Differentiated Planetesimal Formation, Migration and Destruction in an 3 Myr Old Excited CTTS System
• A question of personalities: evolution of viscous and wind-driven protoplanetary discs in the presence of dead zones